


Don't Ask

by wyrmy



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Childhood Friends, Heaven is Terrible (Good Omens), Homophobia, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Quote: You go too fast for me Crowley (Good Omens), Religious Fanaticism, Underage Drinking, gratuitous use of fast car by tracy chapman, heaven is very cult-like, it does work out though you have my personal assurance, so we are going there in this au sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:27:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29561190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyrmy/pseuds/wyrmy
Summary: Aziraphale's family always wanted him to keep secrets: secrets about their own controlling religious fanaticism. it's a hard habit to break.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	Don't Ask

**Author's Note:**

> tw, and I cannot stress this enough, for religious cult themes. also there's a mention of an infected piercing but it's a passing mention.

“Don’t tell.” 

It was a sort of slogan in Aziraphale’s house. Don’t tell outsiders about our family religious practices. Don’t tell anyone that you’re special, that you will be saved when they burn. Don’t tell them why you can’t be friends with them.

Don’t tell them anything about us.

Aziraphale didn’t tell. He was good at keeping secrets, any secret. Before he even knew it was wrong he didn’t tell his family that he liked boys. He didn’t tell them about the little stash of romantic novels that he kept in a forgotten corner of the attic.

He didn’t tell them he had a secret best friend.

His parents asked to see his phone and computer frequently and made sure he came home directly after school, but they couldn’t do anything about who he saw at school.

They met one day when Crowley, who always ate, or rather picked at, his lunch alone, sat down next to Aziraphale, who also always ate his lunch alone.

“Crowley,” said Aziraphale, for that was the name he used at school.

“Hi,” said Crowley. “What are you reading?"

“Oh it’s that wretched book we were assigned in English. I’m just getting it out of the way now so I don’t have to read it later.”

“You like reading.” It was not a question.

“Normally,” said Aziraphale cautiously. 

“What’s it about then.”

“Aren’t you reading it too?”

“Reading, is- ehh. Not really my strong suit. Whole books take a long time.”

“Well”, said Aziraphale. “It starts…”

After that, he and Crowley had lunch together every day and Aziraphale provided very accurate summaries for everything they had to read in their classes. Crowley was excellent at memorizing the information given him. 

They skipped class to go on walks together and it made Aziraphale feel brave like no lectures about being a soldier of Christ ever had. Anthony (only Aziraphale was allowed to call him that) played occasional pranks on the teachers at school and it made Aziraphale feel wicked, which should have been a bad feeling, but wasn’t.

Anthony was good at math and bad at English. Anthony was clumsy at sports but simply pretended that he was too lazy and too cool to play. 

Anthony was tall, and an early adopter of the ipod, and was therefore about as attractive as it was possible for someone to be. When reading his secret harlequin romances, Aziraphale imagined himself as the heroine and Anthony as the hero. Or vise-versa.

One day, when Crowley greeted him by saying “hello, gorgeous”, Aziraphale wanted to say that it was Crowley who was gorgeous, who was beautiful. It was on the tip of his tongue to say it, he was bursting to say it. But he didn’t tell. He simply looked away to hide the fact that he was blushing.

When Crowley asked him if he wanted to “hang out” sometime after school he had to say no, thank you, and Crowley looked so crestfallen. He wanted to explain everything, lay it all out before his friend Anthony. Aziraphale heard his father’s voice: “they are trying to destroy true faith, they are trying to corrupt the righteous. If you tell outsiders anything, anything at all about us, particularly about the way your mother and I run this household, they are going to take you away and put you in an orphanage, they are going to stop you from correctly worshipping God, and you are not going to be righteous anymore. Do you want that?” and a small part of him had thought yes. But he hadn’t told his father about it, just like he stayed silent now in the midst of Anthony’s astonished disappointment.

Anthony’s parents didn’t make rules for him to follow. They were not around much, and when they were they preferred not to be bothered by him. Anthony sometimes brought expensive wine bottles from his parents’’ basement to share with Aziraphale at school. The wine was nice, once you got used to it.

Anthony had pierced his own ears more than once with a needle in his bathroom. They had gotten infected and his parents hadn’t even noticed. 

Anthony’s parents had money. That was about all they could give him.

When he was old enough, they bought him a flashy car, a black one that’d cost a lot of money, by the looks. The very first day he had it, Anthony drove his flashy car around the school parking lot, revving the engine. When Aziraphale was waiting for the bus that afternoon, Anthony pulled up in front of him in his car.

He leant over the passenger seat to open the door. “Hi!” he said. “Would you like a ride?”

Aziraphale calculated that it was better to hop in quickly and avoid a scene. He did so.

Aziraphale did not like Anthony’s reckless driving. It made his heart pound in his chest and his hands clammy and when he looked over at Anthony in the driver’s seat, so handsome and skillful with his car, he felt all peculiar, as if he might explode and weep and vomit with nerves all at once. 

There was a song on the car radio, quietly. You’ve got a fast car. Is it fast enough so we can fly away?

When they got to the street where Aziraphale lived, Anthony parked. He turned in his seat.

“Do you want a lift somewhere? I could take you anywhere you like. Anywhere you want to go.”

His eyes were big and serious.

Aziraphale wanted to tell him to start up the car and just drive until day turned to night. He wanted to lean across the space between them and kiss Anthony on the mouth, in the way he knew to be a sin. He wanted to say, I don’t care where you take me because I would go anywhere with you.

But he didn’t tell.

“You go too fast for me,” he said. And then he got out of the car.

It was years before they spoke again. Aziraphale got away from his family, which was draining and awful. He spent months lying in bed or on the floor, hardly able to breathe because of the weight of despair that crushed him. 

He made a few tentative friends and started going outside occasionally.

He didn’t tell any of them about his family history.

Aziraphale had a job that he didn’t much like, and a very small circle of women friends that he went to pubs with, and a therapist. He wanted to believe that this was enough to make him happy. 

He went on a few dates, but they tended to fizzle out. He had spent all his life learning how to avoid talking to people, so it was understandably quite difficult to make a connection, especially when the voice of his father railed against homosexuality in his ears.

One day he looked up the name Anthony J. Crowley on google. There were several results, including a few different Facebook profiles.

Aziraphale had never had a Facebook in his life, it not being something that his parents would have approved of, but making one was not too difficult. Maybe nothing was too difficult, if it meant reuniting with Crowley.

He sent a simple message:

“I’m Aziraphale, we were at school together. There’s something I’d like to tell you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! if you liked this, you might like my first ever fic "The Memory that I Was Yours" which has a very similar premise.   
> Kudos and comments make me extremely, extremely happy.


End file.
